The Very Adorable Resistance of Kawaii Metal
By Chris Rinthalukay
In the 2013 music video “Gimme Chocolate,” three teen girls adorned with red hair bows and tutus sing and dance a song befitting of your typical J-pop band. Except, it’s not. The girls are the face of Babymetal, a synthesis of pop vocals and heavy metal. In “Gimme Chocolate,” a musician dressed like a skeleton delivers a guitar solo, while a man crowd surfs on top of a packed audience. The video ends with these words on screen: “See you in the [mosh] pit.”
On first viewing, one might describe it as “vaguely fascist, but cute” — as if Rammstein decided to start a side project with the cast of Dance Moms. The synchronized choreography, the coordinated outfits, the saccharine and pure “youth,” and the mesmerizing hold they have on the audience all seem like something pulled from the nightmares of Joseph Goebbels.
The members of Babymetal are the progenitors of “Kawaii metal,” a genre that brings the Japanese brand of cuteness into the traditionally masculine world of metal. Their aesthetic, dubbed “Gothic Lolita” takes inspiration from Alice in Wonderland and 18th century European fashion.
And while this might seem like just another watered-down metal band in a long history of the corporatization of rebellion, kawaii metal is, true to its root, punk (and metal) as f***.
Babymetal is a group of three girls (Su-Metal, Moametal, and formerly Yuimetal) who sing, dance, and cheer in high-pitched voices over a band thrashing out power chords and guitar solos. Meanwhile, fellow Kawaii metal band Deadlift Lolita consists of 6’ Australian pro-wrestler Richard Magarey (aptly named Ladybeard) and 4’ 11” Japanese pro-wrestler Reika Saiki, who dish out dual vocals that incorporate heavy metal growls and clean J-pop. In “SIX PACK TWINS,” the duo wax that “weight training is a lonely road” and encourage listeners to stay on said road. It’s also worth noting that both performers, while sporting bonnets, are extremely ripped. Hence the workout-themed lyrics.
A group like Babymetal might seem like a product of the hyper-exploitative farming of new pop icons. They work under one of Japan’s biggest talent agencies, Amuse, so their creation doesn’t exactly scream grassroots like their punk or metal predecessors. But the difference between J-pop and Kawaii metal is that Kawaii metal occupies a long history of Japanese youth reclaiming and redefining Japanese culture in an attempt to make it their own. So, amidst this conflict of cutesy creepiness and obvious commercialism, Kawaii metal asserts itself as being dangerous by challenging established genres.
Reclaiming Culture
Before the mid-20th century, “Kawaii” was a derogatory term in Japanese, meaning “pitiable” or “pathetic,” rather than “cute.” But in the 1970s it emerged as a rebellion against traditional Japanese culture.
It ran alongside a number of global revolutions that started in the 1950s and 60s, such as the Civil Rights Movement, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, and Japan’s own protests against the revision of the 1951 US-Japan Security Treaty (the Anpo jouyaku, or Anpo).
In schools, where traditional ways of speaking and writing were overemphasized to preserve Japanese culture, Kawaii handwriting and speech, which was bubbly, hard to read, and seen as childish, was banned. It was deemed “dangerous” in a political climate where students and governments clashed over socio-cultural values. Subsequently, Kawaii handwriting worked as a sort of “coded” language that could disrupt administrative order, especially because it challenged traditional nostalgia for cultural change. So, in 1969, as a result of rebellious youths, the Japanese Ministry of Education revamped its efforts to institutionalize “Japaneseness” by passing the Law for Temporary Measures Concerning University Management (Daigaku no Uneei ni Kansuru Rinjisochihou). This sought to normalize Japanese values within the management of universities, which critics feared would revive pre-war nationalism. But the youth of Japan, activists and kawaii alike, just wanted to reclaim their culture and make it their own.
It is this theme of youth culture versus nostalgia for tradition, or in extreme cases remilitarization, that led to the flourishing of Kawaii culture. It was through Japan’s national branding efforts that anime, and eventually kawaii, would be exported globally without its subversive roots.
While the government’s promotion of Japanese culture helped bring Kawaii (and other aspects of Japanese culture) into the mainstream consciousness, their national branding effort (Cool Japan) and the commercialization of cute functionally diluted its grassroots and counter-cultural substance by occupying the same niche market Japan haphazardly promoted. Kawaii started in Japan as an act of expression amid a country suffering from civil dissent and a hangover from war, economic stagnation, and cultural conservatism.
But rather than being some weird kitsch, Kawaii metal helps to reconcile Kawaii’s subversive roots in ways all too familiar to western punk and metal.
Punk, Metal, and Cute
In the 1970s, punk and metal started as reactions to the overcommercialization and excess of the music industry. Their values were highly political and responded to consumerism with a DIY, anti-establishment culture. The late 1960s saw the emergence of Black Sabbath, who described the military as a satanic instrument of death in the song “War Pigs.” In the 1970s, bands like Dead Kennedys wrote aggressively political songs like “Let’s Lynch the Landlord.” Later in the 80s, hardcore progenitor Bad Brains was banned from multiple establishments for their famously violent mosh pits. It was punk and metal’s abrasive and loud approach that defined them as dangerous in the public eye. Today, however, the mainstream use of the term “mosh pits” has become standard, even outside of punk and metal shows.
That is not to say Japan did not have its own punk and metal revolution. In the late 1970s Japanese bands like G.I.S.M., Gauze, Friction, and THE STALIN emerged. These bands, being both punk and metal, came in the wake of massive protests against military cooperation treaties between the US and Japan. Like their Western counterparts, they were often anti-establishment and anti-militarism. G.I.S.M.’s song “Endless Blockades for the Pussyfooter,” for example, reads:
“You no way notice the demagogue, you no way notice the militaristic, you no way notice the bombing, you no way notice the death in action.”
While the abrasiveness of punk and metal is mostly dead today, Kawaii metal is still able to reflect on Japan’s socially marginalized youth, who are often called lazy and infantile by their elders. Rather than reacting to the commercialization and excess of the music industry, it reacts to the economic hardship of the 1990s, or Japan’s Lost Decade.
During this time, Japan’s economy suffered from stagnation, as career prospects for young people became precarious. The generation gap continued to expand as Japan’s population aged and birth rates plummeted. This young generation of workers were first called FREETERs, an amalgam of the English word “Free”, and the German word for worker, “Arbeiter.” This amalgam invokes the Japanese word arubaito, part-time work, to describe someone who chooses not to work as a salaryman. This term then changed to Precariat, a sociological and economic portmanteau combining “proletariat” and “precarious.” Much like British and American punks during the Reagan/Thatcher years responded to this precarity by rebelling, so, too, did Japanese youth.
This tradition lives on in Kawaii metal bands like Deadlift Lolita and Babymetal. Take Deadlift Lolita’s video for “Pump Up JAPAN” — bodybuilder Richard Margerey faux-presses a stuffed sloth in a gender-bending outfit featuring ribboned pigtails, while his bandmate, Reika Saiki wears a traditional cheerleader uniform (Saiki is also a bodybuilder). Margerey singing in falsetto to a fake baby might seem goofy and light-hearted, but the lyrics pit Japan’s “good ol’ days,” against a modern culture of overwork and lack of access to childcare.
The song isn’t quite as confrontational as say, Dead Kennedys singing “The law don’t mean shit//If you got the right friends” or (mockingly) “Kill the poor.” Instead, it offers what scholar Masafumi Monden calls “delicate revolt,” which softly and directly subverts established stereotypes and gender norms.
Another aspect of Kawaii metal is its fashion, Gothic Lolita. Beginning in the 1980s, Gothic Lolita was a DIY style that evolved from different producers and fashion trends throughout the years. It was also seen to be troublesome for challenging Japanese gender roles and social expectations like family and work. It was and still is a subculture that stresses self expression and asserting one’s presence through fashion.
The origins and politics of Kawaii metal are, like the music itself, complex and multilayered. But most importantly, it chafes against the notion that it’s just some bizarre corporate monstrosity on the music scene. Either way, don’t confuse cuteness with naivety.
